Work Text:
Naruto doesn't look at the mirror much these days, though he hears it often, how much he looks like his dad. They tell him too, with pride and awe in their voices, how he has grown into every bit of a hero his father was.
Days like today, when he looks down at his own hands and imagines he can still see the blood dripping from his fingertips, he muses if this is what irony feels like.
Days like today, when he thinks he understands just a little bit more of what he has never wanted to understand, he doesn't wonder how killing his own best friend could make him a hero. Neither does he wonder, if his dad died feeling like a hero.
Instead, he wishes someone had bothered to tell him what it really means to be one.
That being a hero sometimes means sacrificing the people you love. That the ones you care about most are often the ones you're forced to give up first.
Because true heroes are never selfish, are they?